Ok, now that you know the basics of the what the internet is I can teach you the simple basics of starting your very own online business! So lets get started:
Setting your online business goals:The process of setting goals and objectives and then designing strategies for attaining them is essential when starting an Internet Business. So, you end up with what is called a business plan.
To set specific goals for your new business, first ask yourself this question:To save you some research work, I’ve included the list of Top 17 Best-selling items / categories on the Internet below:
1. Clothing
2. Toys and Video Games
3. Electronics
4. Computer Hardware
5. VCDs / DVDs
6. Books
7. Greeting Cards
8. Home Furnishing
9. Jewelry
10. Health
11. Travel
12. Automobile
13. Real Estate
14. Online Trading
15. Music
16. Food
17. Sports
When identifying a need, doing market research is part of your homework. One of your first steps should be to find out what it means to do business online and to determine the best ways for you to fit into the exploding field of e-commerce (electronic commerce). The more information you have on the following aspects of the Internet, the more likely you are to succeed in doing business online:
Competition: Familiarize yourself with other existing Internet Businesses that are already doing what you want to do.
Customers: Research the various kinds of customers who shop online and who might visit your site. Write all your ideas down on a piece of paper. Ask yourself, “What do I have that people are looking for on the Internet?” Take your time. This is not supposed to be an overnight activity. So, don’t be surprised if you take days. Taking your time and doing a thorough market research on the Internet beats jumping onto an opportunity at first sight.
Environment: Explore the special language and style of online communication – in other words, know the culture of the Internet. If you are not yet familiar with the culture of the Internet, then the best way to learn is to subscribe to e-zines (electronic magazines) and newsletters for your reading.
What if you don’t have any products to sell?I would like to take this chance to get a HUGE MYTH out of the way. If you think you NEED to have a product to sell to make money – then you’re dead wrong, really.
You’ll be glad that you’re wrong after I tell you this. You still CAN make money without having to create your own product. And there are several instances you DON’T NEED to HAVE a product to sell at all in order to make money!
How?Quite simply, you can either be a referral to earn a commission or sell advertising spaces on your website or newsletter. That, my friend, is just a speck of a dust. There are still many other ways you can make money on the Internet WITHOUT having to have your own product to sell.
Furthermore, you can either: • Sign up as an affiliate and promote someone else’s product (this is even easier than the first business). All you’d need to do is sign up to an affiliate program and drive traffic to your affiliate link…Again, you can use Google Adwords to drive traffic to the link.
• Buy Resell Rights to someone else’s product and start selling it on the internet. All you would need to do is buy resell rights to an info product, upload it to the internet and drive traffic to it via Google Adwords…and there’s your 1 hour online business. You could also…
This is good news to those who are already sweating over the thought that of needing to create or have their own product to sell to make money! However, the 10 Step approach to setting up your own Internet Business presented in this chapter gears more towards “selling products or services” Internet Business Models.
Picking an online business modelThe next thing to do on the list is to choose the right Internet Business Model. Now this is crucial to your Internet Business success. The Internet Business Model has to be right for the type of product or service you’re offering to your customers. When choosing the right Internet Business Model, you will want to take the following factors into consideration:
• Profit Margin – the higher the profit margin, the better.• Shipping Cost – as low as possible or even none.
model that has the best marketing strategy for your product or services.
To date, there are 19 low-cost, high-profit Internet Business Models on the Internet to choose from.
Identify your target marketThe inside secret is to search in search engines (such as Google and Overture) with keywords related to your product or service to find out if many websites, newsletters and community groups focus on this interest.
Get a domain nameI have already explained to you what a domain name is. You also know that your website address can ALSO be your Internet Business name.
You will want to take out another new piece of paper again to write down ALL the keywords related to your Internet Business. You see, you want your domain name to:
• be short and easy to remember (and catchy, too!),• include keywords of your product or service to improve search engine rankings.
start writing down all the keywords related to break-dance.
For starters, write 100 keywords. What next, you ask? Write some more! Write 200 or 300 if you have to. The more keywords, the better. That is because this is a one-off activity. And remember that you will be using this domain name for a very long time, if not forever. Now, don’t even get lazy.
Okay, I’ll offer you some food for thought.Are you parent to any child? If you are not, then imagine you are one right now. You and your spouse have a child for the first time. You and your spouse would want to give the best name to your child, right? Of course you both would! You and your spouse would brainstorm on giving your child the best name. “How about John?” “Aw, John is too common a name!” “Then how about …?” “I think the name…” and finally, your child has a name to be addressed by.
When brainstorming on your child’s name, you and your spouse consciously or unconsciously know that giving your child the best and meaningful name is VERY important because your child will be living with that name from cradle to the grave.
So, on the same token, why would you not think the same when brainstorming on a good domain name? This is your Internet Business. You need to nurture and grow it during its infancy stages before it rewards you. Are you not going to give it your best attention, too?
With the help of the list of keywords you have written down, you will find it easy to get a domain name that fulfills the 3 guidelines stated above.
Next, check whether the domain name has been registered or not. If the domain name has been registered by someone else, you will have to use another domain name. So, maybe you’ll think of using www.lordofthefloor.com for a domain name.
When brainstorming on a good domain name, be sure to come up with at least a few names in case the domain name you wish to use is already taken. Remember me telling you that there can never be two houses bearing the same address?
Another thing you have to consider is the various kinds of domain names on the Internet. So you will have to choose carefully.
Below are some of the common ones:• .com - stands for commercial / community. The most overused domain entity on the Internet. Recommended for your Internet Business.
• .net - stands for network.• .gov - stands for government. All government web sites use this domain entity.
The next thing to do is find a web host. Any business needs a place to call home. If you run a conventional business, you have to rent space in an office or shopping complex. In the case of setting up an Internet Business, you need to set up a virtual space. You do so by creating a website and finding a host for your site. A web host company that makes your site available 24/7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) by maintaining it on a Web server. I have covered this topic with you briefly in the second chapter.
When sourcing for a good web host, you want to make sure that your host has a fast connection to the Internet and can handle large numbers of
simultaneous visits (also known as hits) that your website is sure to get eventually. You also want to make sure that your web host offers a variety of related services, including some or all of the following:
• E-mail addresses. You’re like to be able to get several e-mail addresses for your own. Many web hosts also give you special e-mail addresses called autoresponders (discussed earlier in Chapter 2).
• Domain name. You and I have just covered this subject above.• Web page software. Some web hosting services include web page authoring / editing software. • Shopping Cart software. Most organizations prove you with Web page forms that you can fill out to create sale items and offer them in an online shopping cart.
• Multimedia / CGI scripts. Some web hosting services have the ability to serve complex and memory-intensive content such as RealAudio sound files or RealVideo video clips. They also let you process web page forms that you include on your site by executing computer programs called CGI scripts.
• Site statistics. Site statistics give you an idea of how many visitors you have received.Since you’re into business, the purpose of your website is to SELL. Nothing else! That’s because YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD HAVE ONE MAIN FOCUS.
Nope, it’s not selling dozens or hundred of products. Nope, it’s not links to several different affiliate programs and NOPE, certainly not a link to Yahoo.com.
Doing any of the above just confuses your visitor, thus decreasing your chances of converting him or her into your customer.
If you’re selling a product or service, it should be clear what ONE action you want them to take. They would either:
• Buy your product or serviceSo, you need to get your visitors to leave their email address and other essential information for follow-up increases your chance to help you make a sale because the fact is that most people don’t buy on first contact.
To do this, you write a compelling sales letter for your product and post it to your website. You can add images of your product, testimonials from happy customers, and other relevant images. The focus of your website is the sales letter.
Now, let’s talk about the layout of your web page. Your main text color should be black on a white background. You can have other colors such as blue, red and gray on your website, but the background behind the text should be white. The color of your main text should be black. No other exceptions! That is because this is the easiest format to read. You are in business so dress your site in a business manner.
On the technical side, you can choose from three methods to create your own web pages:• Do it yourself (D.I.Y.) – if you are well versed in using web page tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage to create your web pages then this option is probably the best for you.
• Hire A Free Lancer, Professional or Internal I.T. Team - if you don’t know how to create web pages, you may want to consider hiring professional help as learning how to create your own web pages can be time-consuming. While it can incur high professional fee, this option can be your best value for money in the long
run. However, this option should be filtered out if you’re on a strict budget.• Go to Solobis – if the above two methods are not for you – don’t sweat over it. This suite has been set up to remove not only the technical barriers but also eliminate risks for aspiring but clueless Internet Entrepreneurs at an affordable price. Besides having over 400 beautiful web site templates to choose from, this suite provides other Internet Business tools and services such as Sequential Autoresponders, Pop-Up Window Generator, Mailing List Broadcaster, Article Generator, Killer Sales Letter Generator, Headline Generator, and many more to get you starting your Internet Business quickly! If you are on a strict budget, then all the more you must go to this suite to make your dreams of earning income from the Internet come to life!
Create a unique selling proposition (USP) for you product / website.Find ways to make your business stand out from the crowd. Make yourself and your web site unique in some way and providing things that others don’t offer. They can be as tangible as half-price sales, contests, seasonal sales, freebies or reports. They can also make your business site higher in quality than the rest.
Here’s what you can do to create your own USP. Take a brand new piece of paper and write, “I know how most…” Then, half-way down the page, write “Well, what I do is…”
That is important because there really is no purpose of your Internet Business to exist if you have a million visitors coming to view your site but too few of them actually become your customers (a conversion rate of less than 1% is rated poor).
The purpose of this activity is to know how most businesses in your field are in the first place and then you write what tells you and your Internet Business apart from them. This will take a while to do. Checking on your competition’s USP is part of the activity, too.
Next, you will want to write out many phrases or sentences. This can take days but it will be worth it for your Internet Business in the long run. Once you have just the right phrase, that will be your USP which you will use to separate you from all of the competition. Now, that is what I call UNIQUE!
Write sales copy that gets results!Your website must be treated as a sales letter, not a brochure. That’s because brochures don’t sell. Let me repeat – BROCHURES DON’T SELL.
Brochures just inform theirs viewers of a product or service. But they won’t help you make even a sale (unless that is really what you want but hey, I have yet to meet anyone who wants to be in business to lose sales!).
Your sales letter consists of primarily:You have to find a headline that will grab the attention of your visitors or else they will not read the rest of your sales letter. This is very crucial – the headline will make or break your sales letter!
Assuming, you’re selling an instructional video on how to play soccer professionally, so you must come up with an attention-grabbing headline for your product like the following: